Marmalade Quill Shelf Institute

Category: Peer Review

  • An Open Letter To Everyone Who Says It Was Just The Wind

    An Open Letter To Everyone Who Says It Was Just The Wind

    We write to address a persistent claim: that a fallen object was moved by the wind.

    We have examined this claim in depth. We have measured the wind. We have measured the cat. We find that the cat is stronger.

    Evidence Against The Wind

    • The wind has never been seen holding a paw out.
    • The wind does not look at you afterwards.
    • The wind does not purr.

    Evidence For The Cat

    The cat was present. The cat was calm. The cat was already looking at the object when the window was still closed. We consider this decisive.

    Methodology

    We placed a lightweight cup on a table by an open window and recorded wind speed throughout the day. The wind peaked at midday, at which point nothing happened. At 12:03 a cat entered the room and the cup fell. The Laboratory finds this statistically persuasive.

    A Note On Curtains

    We acknowledge that curtains sometimes move in the wind. But a curtain that moves is not a curtain that pushes. A curtain, we remind readers, is merely a flag of surrender.

    Reply From The Wind

    No reply has been received. We take this as an admission.

    Appendix A

    The Laboratory has also received a letter from a rival group, who claim that draughts explain 12 percent of falls. We have replied that the remaining 88 percent are explained by the cat, and that the 12 percent were probably the cat as well, in a hurry.

    Appendix B

    For completeness we have measured the speed of the wind against the speed of a cat who has just seen a bird. The cat won by a wide margin and then lost interest.

    Conclusion

    We rest our case on the table, gently, near the edge.

    We invite the wind to submit a rebuttal. It may leave it on a table edge.

  • Statistical Appendix: How We Measured Disappointment

    Statistical Appendix: How We Measured Disappointment

    The Laboratory developed the Disappointment Index to measure how let down a cat appears when an object does not fall as expected. It uses four categories.

    • Zero: the object fell. The cat was pleased.
    • One: the object fell, but silently. The cat was mildly cross.
    • Two: the object did not fall. The cat looked at the object for a long time.
    • Three: the object did not fall, and the human put it back. The cat looked at the human for much longer.

    Validation

    The Index has been validated against the rate of tail twitching, which correlates strongly with disappointment and also with lunch. We have controlled for lunch by timing the trials before breakfast, which has made everybody sad.

    Use In Industry

    Several manufacturers of mugs have asked to license the Index. We have declined, since it is not for sale, and since they could not be trusted to hold a cat steady.

    Limitations Of The Index

    The Index has limits. Cats are complex creatures, and a single twitch may reflect disappointment, joy or an itch. In the early version of the Index, a cat scratching an ear was recorded as four on the scale, which caused unnecessary worry.

    Future Work

    We plan a Version 2 of the Index that includes a fifth category, Resignation, to be applied to cats who have given up on the whole thing and gone to sleep. A sixth category, Smugness, is already in draft.

    Case Example

    In one trial, a cat named Biscuit watched a cup remain stubbornly on a table for forty minutes. She scored a three. When the cup fell, she scored a minus one, which we had to invent on the spot and which now sits in an annex.

    The appendix is available in print on request, in a font large enough for a cat to read from a distance.

  • Peer Review Report: ‘On the Sound Of A Fallen Fork’

    Peer Review Report: ‘On the Sound Of A Fallen Fork’

    The Laboratory was recently asked to review a paper titled “On the Sound of a Fallen Fork” from the Department of Crashes at a neighbouring institute. We reproduce our report below, with their names removed and our feelings preserved.

    Summary Of The Submission

    The authors claim that a fork, dropped onto a tile floor, produces a sound that varies according to the mood of the person who dropped it. The authors present four graphs, two photographs and a sentence that appears twice.

    General Comments

    The topic is of interest. The execution is not. The paper confuses a fork with a spoon on page three, then corrects itself on page five, then confuses them again on page six. A reader may begin to suspect that the authors have only seen cutlery on television.

    Specific Concerns

    • The sample size is one fork. We recommend at least two, and ideally a whole drawer.
    • No cat was present at any of the trials. The authors do not explain how the fork fell without help.
    • The word “clang” is used 31 times. The word “clink” is used 4 times. Neither is defined.
    • Figure 2 is a drawing of a fork, and appears to have been done by a child. We hope it was a talented one.

    Statistical Analysis

    The authors state that their results are significant at the 5 percent level. Our statistician, a cat who prefers not to be named, looked at the figures for several minutes and then yawned. The Laboratory interprets this as a rejection.

    Recommendation

    We recommend that the paper be rejected, then accepted, then rejected again, in order to give the authors a sense of the full experience. We also recommend that they add a cat.

    Detailed Remarks On Methodology

    The authors describe their method as rigorous, which is generous. A fork was dropped from the height of a human elbow onto a surface described only as hard. There is no record of the temperature of the room, the age of the fork, or whether it was in a good mood. In our experience a fork in a bad mood sounds noticeably sharper.

    The authors also appear to have used the same fork for all trials. A fork subjected to repeated falls will develop a certain world weariness, and this will bias the results. We recommend a fresh fork for each trial, and a moment of silence for the retired ones.

    Remarks On The Literature

    The reference list contains 14 items, of which three are the authors’ own previous papers and two are recipes. We checked the citations. Reference 9 does not exist. Reference 11 exists but argues the opposite. Reference 12 is a photograph of a cat, and we are happy to say it is the strongest source in the paper.

    Remarks On Ethics

    The authors do not state whether the fork consented. We would like to see an ethics statement, a risk assessment and a small cushion.

    Questions For The Authors

    • What was the fork thinking?
    • Why was the floor tile and not wood?
    • Why does the second graph show the sound getting quieter with time, when the sound clearly continues in the reader’s head?
    • Is the fork a member of the authors’ family?

    Confidential Comments To The Editor

    This is the best paper we have read this week. We recommend rejecting it solely so that we may submit something similar next month.

    Reviewer Conduct

    This review was prepared by three cats, one of whom did the reading, one of whom did the writing and one of whom lay across the printout throughout. We believe that is a standard division of labour.

    We offer these comments in the spirit of collegiality. We will be at the conference, near the buffet, standing very still, and watching.